


The Space Between Echoes

by alp



Series: Vibrations [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Action & Romance, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Slow Burn, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-09-18 21:48:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9404459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alp/pseuds/alp
Summary: On the eve of the Battle of Yavin, Jyn and Cassian are sent to scout out a new location for Alliance headquarters. They grow closer.But as for the mission, well... It doesn't go quite as planned.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As a warning: I'm playing fast and loose with Star Wars canon/lore. Some details herein are taken from the universe; others are just plain made up. Aiming to retain the spirit if not precisely the word.

“It’s my right to be involved.”

She stood in the war room, leaning over the table, hands wrapped around its edge. The air buzzed with the sound of comlinks, of operators relaying instructions and confirming receipts. Half her face was bathed in the blue and green light of a nearby readout, and through its glow she perceived the rest of the space -- dark edges limned with emerald.

Across from her, General Draven draped his forearms over the back of a chair. Mon Mothma stood beside him, hands linked. It was surreal, to think that the last time Jyn had been party to such a scene, she’d been a prisoner, a bargaining chip. She was in a much better position, this time around 

Not that it was making a lick of difference.

“I’m sorry,” Mothma said. “I understand why you want to be a part of it, but that operation simply hasn’t a role for you.”

Draven straightened and took a step. “You aren’t a fighter pilot, Erso. You’re a thief.”

Her body grew stiff. “Oh, is that all I am? Still?” She lifted her chin.

“Not all, no; but still? Yes,” he responded. “It’s what you’re best at, isn’t it? It’s why you were able to accomplish what you did on Scarif. You scout. You case. You infiltrate.”

She narrowed her eyes. Only a few days had passed. Her injuries had not required full or even partial submersion; topical care had sufficed, and since being cleared, she’d wandered about in something of a daze. The initial rush of victory had given way to listlessness. She knew exactly where it came from, but she’d never been good at facing that sort of thing. She yearned for a distraction. She yearned to get back into the fight, to get out there and finish the task that had been given to her, that was _made_ for her, that represented everything that moral duty alone could never get her to acknowledge.

The men and women around her, the strangers who now all seemed to know her intimately, could be a bit much. She’d been alone and drifting for so many years. But they were eager, as eager as she was, and she found herself feeding off their energy. The news about Alderaan only made them more impatient. And it made her burn, with fervor, to take her father’s sacrifice and transform it into something worthwhile.

When Mothma had summoned her, she’d hoped it meant the time had come. Now, it looked as if that might not be the case. It looked an awful lot like they might just sideline her, despite her history, despite what she’d done.

What would that mean for her? Would there be any reasons left for her to stay? Most of them were gone.

Most.

Mothma glanced at Draven and took a breath. “In light of recent events, we believe that the Empire will soon know the location of this base. We need to begin planning an evacuation. That requires the identification of a fallback position.”

Jyn frowned. “You don’t already have one?”

“There are several possibilities, but we need to make certain they’re still beneath the Empire’s attention before making a selection.”

She breathed, slow. Her gaze moved to the table. In its inert state, it was a simple star map, with the dark expanse of space carved into concentric circles. She had an inkling of where they were headed with this, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it.

“What’s that got to do with me?”

There was a pause long enough to make it obvious that the general wasn’t completely on board with his own proposal. “We would like you to formally join Alliance Intelligence.” His jaw tightened as he said it. “For your first assignment, you’d be deployed as a long-range scout, traveling to potential base locations and reporting back to us on their viability.”

The colors on the readout changed, becoming orange, red. Draven’s features shifted; in this light, he looked more gaunt. More tired. She didn’t want to do it. It made sense, if she thought about it. She was more suited to that sort of work and, well, she _wasn’t_ a fighter pilot, and all of her training and soldiering had fallen into the “guerilla” category.

But it was her right.

“There must be something else,” she said. “I stayed with you to stop the planet killer, to convince _you_ to stop it. I want to be here when it burns.” She rocked on the balls of her feet. “Set me up as an operator if you have to, but don’t send me away.”

“It’s not sending you away; it’s sending you where you’ll be the most useful.”

“I can be useful against the Death Star.” Only a fraction of her believed it.

“No. You can’t.” Draven sighed and shook his head. “Feel free to take it up with General Dodonna if you’d like; he’ll tell you the same thing. If you want to be a part of this fight, then this is what’s on the table, take it or leave it.”

She closed her eyes. Thought of her father. Thought of Saw. Causes were slippery things; she’d learned that from the latter.

Mothma cleared her throat. “It’s worth mentioning that you’d be Captain Andor’s partner on this mission.” The corner of her lips quirked upwards, and she shifted her weight. “He specifically requested you.”

Jyn blinked. She felt a tightening in her core, a tugging that was at once gentle and fierce.

Well. Her father had believed in the Rebellion, right? She could honor him, still, by working to keep it afloat.

She could honor other things, as well.

She closed a fist around her kyber crystal.

“Fine. When do we start?”

* * *

Cassian looked exhausted.

It took a fair bit out of a person, convalescing in a bacta tank, and he’d spent 16 hours floating in the one on base. He’d slept for a full solar day afterwards. She knew, because she’d asked after him, often enough that the medical droids had started being curt with her.

Their irritation had reminded her of K-2.

They moved through the interior of the temple, packs slung over their shoulders. It was always busy, always bustling, but at this moment, at this hour, activity had died down just enough for them to be able to comfortably walk abreast. She felt an urge to reach for his hand. She ignored it.

“No matter what they’ve told us, this is partly about loyalty,” he said. His gait had a hitch to it. Bacta couldn’t fix everything. “I disobeyed, and so did you; there can’t not be consequences for that. But they also can’t deny what we’ve done for them.” He shrugged. “So, this is what we get.”

“I take it you’re not thrilled with this, either.”

“No. I’d rather be here. Like you.” He shot her a glance. “But I also know that this is needed. And it’s better than nothing.”

They’d been briefed a few hours before, not long after she’d accepted the assignment. The sight of him, the first proper one she’d had since he’d been taken away from her after Scarif, had warmed her, had secured her in her decision. There were a handful of worlds, selected over months and years by various operatives. Cassian had been among those who’d cultivated contacts in the systems around them. His rank, combined with the breadth of his network, made him an obvious choice for the mission. But there were others who could have done it, and it wouldn’t have been remiss for the Alliance to have chosen _them_ , particularly under the current circumstances.

They’d hadn’t, however. They’d decided that he was their man, and she wasn’t about to leave him when he wanted her. Not after he’d refused to leave her.

The corridor they traveled turned sharply right, and then opened onto the hangar bay. Several hundred feet of clay-colored cement lay before them, terminating in a darkness that clawed its way upward, to the tops of trees, to a jagged skyline that framed the purple-black of night sky, the pinprick glow of stars. Rebels hurried between ships, hopping over and around cables, shouting to one another, waving in sign. Some sat, or stood in circles. The air was filled with chatter.

Cassian dipped his head toward hers. “We could get lucky, of course. I’ve highlighted our best bets. If one of them pans out, we may be able to get back here in time for the show.” A cluster of laughter erupted to their right. “But I don’t have too much hope for that.” He leaned close. “Is that going to be a problem for you?” His breath tickled her ear.

“A little.” More than a little, really. “I wanna see that kriffing thing go down.”

“I know.” His fingers wrapped, briefly, around her upper arm. “Believe me, I know.”

He led her across the hangar, toward a wedge-shaped ship that was a handful of meters smaller than a U-wing. Ground personnel hovered about it. The hatch lay forward of its exhaust and just to the right of an upward slope, which evened out at the cockpit. She’d seen only a few such ships in her day. It had always been under illicit circumstances.

“Are we going to be smuggling on the side?”

He smiled at her. He hadn’t smiled much, if at all, when she’d first met him. “Some people transport goods legitimately, Jyn.”

She strongly doubted that “some people” would include him, if he’d ever had to bring in a haul. “If you say so.”

They boarded and made their way to the cabin; it had been divided into separate sections by thin, after-market plasteel walls -- a cheap, ad-hoc modification. Jyn chose a bunk, dropped her pack, shoved it underneath. Retrieved her blaster (if they were boarded…). Paused to think. She could hear Cassian moving about in the compartment to her right. Her stomach flipped; she took a deep breath, pursed her lips, let it out, slowly. Smiled, just a bit.

She thought of the moment they’d shared on Scarif, in the turbolift, and wondered.

The cockpit was a squat trapezoid; the seats were tucked close together, and lay barely half a meter from the door. When she entered, Cassian was already there, settled into the pilot’s seat, head tilted back, running through calculations. The engine hummed, and the comlink was a well of noise, singing with lilting tones, static, half-formed instructions. The channel was open. He lifted the headphones and settled them over his ears, didn’t bother to pull down the mic.

“Anyone who should know already does.”

She sat beside him. A half-realized notion, a sense that something was not quite right, teetered on the edge of her thoughts.

“We’re heading to Derso first,” he said. “It’s the most hospitable of our options.”

The engine’s hum galloped up a steep crescendo, became a roar. She gripped the arms of her seat.

It was always grueling to leave a world’s atmosphere. The thrust, the force of it, pushed one back, back, tried to _bury._ And the initial transition to light-speed improved upon that sensation. It felt, to her, as if her flesh was aiming to break free of her bones, as if her body desired nothing more than to stay in the space that it was leaving behind, while her spirit longed to sunder itself from it. There were equations, drawn up by people far smarter than she, that explained exactly what it was she was experiencing. But she didn’t see the point in knowing something if the knowing didn’t impact the doing.

“You all right?”

“Fine.” It had ended, in any case.

“Good.”

The stars had become a cascade of light, a stream of vibrant blue-white. The ship had become a gentle lullaby, consistent, true, lulling. Her body had caught up with her soul, but her stomach clenched with an unnameable anxiety.

“They’re naming a squadron after him.”

Jyn furrowed her brow. Cassian hadn’t spoken since they’d pulled away. “What’s that?”

“Bodhi.” His eyes met hers. “Rogue Squadron. It’s his.”

“Oh. Right.” Listlessness. “I’d heard about that.” She looked down. He’d known her father. He’d brought the task to her. He’d been very brave, braver than she had been or could ever be, surely. “I’m glad. He deserves it.” Deserved a hell of a lot more, if she had any say.

“Yes. He does.”

His hand brushed hers. Her fingers curled upwards and, for a moment, became linked with his.

That’s when she realized what was wrong: there was no droid with them.

“So,” she said. She was fidgety. “Where are we going if this place doesn’t work out?”

Their hands separated. He looked at her for a moment, considering, then pushed himself forwards and up, retrieved a sheet of flimsiplast from the inner pocket of his jacket. Handed it to her. On it was a list of systems, each bearing a mark to its left. “If it turns out we can’t use Derso, we have a few decent alternatives.” He leaned over her, and his scent and the heat of his body invaded her space. She breathed in. Her back arched. “But these I’d like to avoid, if we can help it.” His finger slid, paused, three times.

“I’ve heard of Borga.” Swamp planet. “Can’t blame you for not wanting to go there.” Wet and stinking and nigh impossible to properly land on and suitable only as, from what she’d been told, a last resort for the desperate. “What’s wrong with the other two?”

“Edelis is in an active volcanic period,” he replied. “And Hoth…” He paused. “Hoth is a frozen wasteland.”

She eyed him. The obvious question hung on her lips: _you’re from Fest, aren’t you?_ But, of course, she wasn’t supposed to know that, and although he likely wouldn’t be surprised that she’d found it out, it was doubtful he’d appreciate the admission. Their brand of trust relied, at least in part, on them maintaining the polite fiction that they weren’t actually the people they were.

She dropped the flimsi onto the console, drew up her leg, settled her heel onto the edge of her seat. In the first year after Saw had left her, she’d picked up work as a farmhand. She’d needed credits, and lodging, and _food_ , all of it badly enough to answer the first posting she’d come across. Her employers’ dwelling had sat at the crest of a gentle slope, half-submerged in the earth, surrounded by yellowing condensers. On an overcast day, when the air had been thick with moisture, and a near-constant breeze had sliced through her tunic, she’d looked over the space and felt her stomach lurch and her throat close. She hadn’t taken a farm job since.

“You like Yavin 4, don’t you.”

Silence, for a moment.

“Sure, I like it well enough,” he said. “It’s certainly not the worst place I’ve lived.” His forehead creased, and his eyes danced over her face. “Why?”

 _Because it’s nearly the opposite of what you want to avoid._ “It suits you.”

He snorted. “It _suits_ me? And what is that supposed to mean?”

Instead of replying, she rejoined their hands.


	2. Chapter 2

Derso was not Derso. Or, at the very least, it was not the _ only _ Derso. Their planet, whose surface was now 1500 meters below them, was second from its star, and Cassian had informed Jyn that the fourth body in orbit, while equally habitable and equally named, was a subject of interest for traders of a certain type. There had been mention of smapp. Her memories of Coruscant were slight and vague, but there was enough there, enough to bring her parents to mind.

She’d asked him to stop talking. He had.

She liked that about him.

They sped over the jagged profile of a mountain range. The system’s star hung low, casting a glare, orange-white, on the window, offset by a toggleable overlay. Beneath them, the ground and flora had begun to glow. The day was newly born, on this part of the world. They flew into it.

Jyn leaned forward over the console, peered down. Derso 2 had a proper, multifaceted climate, with frozen poles and a band of warmth that hugged its equator, and they’d chosen to track a latitude along the northern edge of that band. Below, the red spines of the mountains fattened and then leveled, opening onto a wide, yellow-green valley, speckled by groves of trees and halved by an overfull river. Its rapids were white, frothy, violent; its banks were cluttered with clusters of tall grass.

She imagined a party, following the river. Ambushers, beyond the treeline, on either side. Flanking them. Drawing together, forming a loose semicircle, harrying them and pushing them up, up, away from the valley’s mouth, back toward where it narrowed, tapering into a solid wall of rock. Trapping them. Folding in on them.

There was a series of tones, short, close together, of medium pitch. Her heart jumped. Her head swung toward Cassian.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said. “Local fauna.” He flicked a series of switches, adjusting the transceiver. She frowned. She didn’t trust those things. She’d known them to be wrong, from time to time.

The valley continued to widen, pressing back against and siphoning ground off the mountains. Cassian dropped them down, angled the belly of the ship to match the slope of the land, hewed closer than Jyn would have dared. She knew how to fly. It was foolish not to learn. Those she’d known who’d never bothered had been locked in to the regions of their birth, at the mercy of environment and history and time, and she’d decided long ago not to be that brand of helpless. But he put her to shame. She supposed, thinking back, that he’d revealed a bit of his true skill when they’d escaped Jehda; she hadn’t really been in the frame of mind to pay attention at the time. Now, she couldn’t help but notice. And, given the givens, he was in a position to demonstrate. 

She closed her eyes. It would be better, a damn lot better, if he wasn’t.

Her attention shifted back to the landscape. It had been nearly two hours since they’d broken atmosphere. Cassian must have thought this area looked promising, or he wouldn’t have closed in, but she still wondered how long it would take, whether they’d have to move to the next parallel. She wondered what she’d do if she got bored. She didn’t tend to make the best decisions, when she did. But, well, things had changed, hadn’t they?

“Wait.” They’d rounded the range and were headed toward the opposite side, passing over a section of rolling foothills. She pushed a foot against her seat, levered herself up.

“What?” Cassian cut the throttle. The craft shuddered. “Do you see something?”

“I think so.”

He banked to the right, turned them back. The sun glinted off the window.

“There,” she said. Amidst the foothills, abutting a ridgeline, there was a wide, U-shaped indentation, lightly forested. It was hard to tell from the sky, but it seemed as though there were extra points of egress along one arm of the U. “I like the looks of that.”

“Well, it’s a start, if nothing else.”

They touched down in the divot between a pair of hills, taxiing under a stand of trees. The transceiver hadn’t picked up any lifeforms since its last alert, but Cassian wasn’t keen to take any chances, and Jyn couldn’t blame him. They gave their weapons a once over. Adjusted their gear. He secured his blaster rifle, moved onto his pistol.

“Dammit.”

It refused to settle into its holster, slid halfway down, then resisted. He reached for the retention release. “It’s jammed.”

She watched him. Blinked. He could probably get it himself, but the angle was awkward, and depending on how bad the jam was, he might have to remove the belt altogether. Better to lend him an extra set of hands.  _ Oh, bantha fodder, Jyn _ . “Here.” She took the blaster, handed it to him, slid her fingers into the holster, curled them toward the outside edge. Her knuckles pressed into his thigh; the flesh gave way, just a bit, just enough for her to detect it through the leather of his gear and the fabric of his trousers. He took a breath -- long, deep, slow. His exhale broke over her head. Curled around the tips of her ears. Her elbow nestled into his abdomen and shifted upward, and his muscles flexed in response, and her thoughts went spiraling.

Well. It wasn’t as if she’d expected, or wanted, anything less. 

A click sounded, a bit of metal gave way, and the mechanism released. “All right.” She pulled her hand back. The rest of her stayed, right there, in his space, close enough that touch was incidental to movement, that the heat of his body was indistinguishable from the heat of her own. “Should be good to go.” She inclined her head and met his eyes. His face was no more than a decimeter from hers. “That ever happen before?”

“No. First time,” he said. His voice was low and full of gravel. “But it does mean I’ll have to get another, when I have the opportunity.” He glanced at the holster, leaning back just enough to retain his pistol. Looked down at her again. “Thank you.”

“Sure. Anytime.”

His fingertips grazed her hip, her waist. “Let’s go. We’re wasting time.”

A retort came to mind. She didn’t use it.

The air was cool, but not unpleasantly so -- 18° standard, light jacket weather. A nice change of pace, after spending half a week in the balmy environs of Yavin 4 and half a day in the tight climate control of a starship. The trees were strange, their bark a shade of orange she’d never seen before. Tiny white flowers bloomed within their leaves. There was a sweet smell, faint.

“You’d think someone would have settled here by now.”

“It’s not a bad place, no.” He walked a few paces behind her, his shoulders set in the wary relaxation of the ready and alert. “But it doesn’t have much in the way of resources -- not the sort that people are interested in, anyway. You’d never get rich off a planet like this.”

“Hasn’t stopped people from setting up on desert worlds.” Ice worlds, at least, had a tendency to be rich in ore and minerals.  _ Like Fest _ . She tucked the thought away.

“Jyn, how much time have you spent in the outer rim?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. He’d been the one to build and collate the file on her; he knew exactly how much time she’d spent out here. He was pretending, for her sake, that he didn’t. “This far out?” Even when she’d been at her most desperate, she’d never strayed too far beyond the mid. There’d always been a maximum distance, an invisible line that, for one reason or another, she’d never wanted to cross. “Not much.”

“It’s different out here. People need greater incentives to stay in a place.”

The terrain sloped sharply downward. They bent their knees, leaned back, palmed the earth. Their boots slid and kicked up small stones, clods of dirt. A worm-like creature, thick and grey and at least four or five decimeters long, shot up from the ground, screeched, wriggled away. Jyn gritted her teeth.

“But, with the Empire expanding, and with things the way they are…” He didn’t need to say it. “You may have a point. I wonder if…” He shook his head. “Well. It’ll be good enough for now.”

“Cassian.” They were on level ground again. She paused, waited for him to come up beside her. His arm pressed against hers. “Don’t get cagey with me. What is it?”

He sighed. “I’m wondering if ‘hospitable’ might actually be a detractor.”

The next couple of hours were spent investigating the space, a basin scooped out of the side of the mountains. Assisted by handhelds and electrobinoculars, they were able to estimate its width at just shy of a kilometer. Toward its mouth, it narrowed, giving Jyn the impression of swimming within the center of a glass of wine. And along the edges of the bowl, there was more than one exit; all but one presented opportunities for ambush and misdirection.

They could defend themselves here. The terrain favored them, gave them ground cover, provided relief valves should siege tactics come into play. And, what was more, the ridgeline bowed inward. Stretching back, far enough that their lights couldn’t reach its end, was a cave whose opening extended nearly the entire width of the bottom of the U.

Cassian shook his head. “Jyn.” He stepped closer to her. His features were warm, relaxed. He smiled. “I think this is it. Nicely done.”

She smiled back, pushed her tongue between her teeth. It was astounding, how much she had come to value his opinion.

“We’ll have to do some exploration in there before we send our report, of course, but...this is better than I could have hoped for.”

“Well, that’s saying something, considering how you feel about hope.”

He huffed. “And, what, you think you’re not the same way?”

She hadn’t been, when she’d first met him, when she’d first come into contact with the Alliance. If anything, she’d been the exact opposite, clinging to life largely out of habit. A lot had happened since then.

Kyber burned against her skin.  _ I am one with the Force and the Force is with me _ .

Listlessness.

The change was barely detectable. Instincts honed over the course of long, hard, years vibrated, raised her hackles, made her shoulders roll back. She paused, widened her stance. Soil scraped beneath treads.

A susurration. Metallic whirring. Crescendo, air and current, the high-pitched wail of a blaster charge. He was between her and it. He was between her and it, and he was turning, but she had heard it first, seen it first, and she was slamming into him before she’d fully registered what she was doing.

It took three shots. They were on the ground, half of her on top of half of him, their legs intermingled in a way that might have made her stomach twist had adrenaline not been focusing her attention on something else altogether. Fifteen meters distant, black, an oval beset by protrusions, hemorrhaging sparks, there lay an Imperial probe. Cassian tilted back his head and took it in.

“Well, shit.”

* * *

 

Jyn was used to moving.

No fewer than three times, when she’d been too young to have a choice or a say, her parents had shuttled her from one planet to another. She had, out of necessity, let go of friends. She had, out of necessity, cultivated an expansive imagination, a refuge from her isolation. She had, out of necessity, thrown herself into her relationship with her mother and father. Made them her world.

Because they  _ were _ her world. Because there was nothing and no one else.

And then they were gone.

Saw and his people were the next best thing, and, as is the wont of rebels, they were always on the march. There were periods, sometimes lengthy, of location-specific activity. But for the most part, they were a roving band, constantly searching and shifting, heading either where it seemed they were most needed or where it seemed they’d best be able to take cover. She’d latched onto the cadre because she’d been in desperate need of friends. She’d latched onto Saw because she’d been in desperate need of a parent.

And then, well, they were gone, too. After that, “rootlessness” had become a byword for “survival.” Transit was required for successful living in the margins of society. She had no true name, no true district, no true region, no true world. Suited her just fine.

So, she didn’t quite know how to take her disappointment.

They hadn’t selected Derso 2, not officially. Even if they had, it wasn’t foregone that Yavin 4 would need to be evacuated. And, beyond that, she didn’t get attached to places. It didn’t make any sense to. 

Cassian had mentioned “greater incentives.” Ah, well.

She wondered if places might not always be places.

“Even if we don’t get anything from this, we need to resupply.” His voice was flat when he said it.

He was disappointed, too. That helped.

Zorii Outpost lay along the Hydian Way on the boundary of the mid and outer rims, a go-between that facilitated trade between the colonies and those worlds that lay beyond. Although Cassian had been chosen for the mission in part due to his network, he’d wanted to avoid tapping into it if possible; Rebellion-centric conversations always carried a risk with them. But one of the worlds on the list had been compromised, and that suggested they needed to update their intel. He’d jumped them to a different, irrelevant sector, sent a coded message. Gotten a response.

They moved down a broad road, past booths and storefronts and small, open-air restaurants, each of which seemed tailored to a specific culinary niche. It was better maintained than most such places she’d been to; the buildings sported the usual wear-and-tear, but they still looked as though they’d been cared for, and the street itself was relatively clean. She wasn’t sure whether that was a good or bad sign.

Cassian’s hand slid over her shoulder, onto her upper back. He bowed his head toward hers. “That’s our guy -- Telara.” His breath was hot on her cheek and neck. She followed his gaze, and took in a man of middle years, balding, leaning against a post with his arms folded and one foot crossed over the other. Even at a distance, she could make out the exaggerated rise and fall of his chest, could tell he was breathing hard. 

“He looks…” she whispered. The man’s eyes darted. “...obvious.”

“Yes. He does.” Cassian took a step and turned to face her. His body wrapped around hers, the inside of his thigh pressing against her hip, his arm curling around her side, tugging her close. “We’ll have to be careful, I think. See what we can do to make this quick.” He glanced over his shoulder, back at Telara. “I may need to reach out to someone else instead.”

He lingered, just a moment, before pulling away. They fell into step beside one another. She struggled to concentrate.

“Oh, thank goodness.” The contact’s shoulders loosened and sagged, as if the sight of them had robbed him of tension. “I was starting to worry.” He pointed to a store across the way; there was a gaudy, oversized awning hanging over the entrance, making the door look tiny and meek. “That one’s mine,” he said. “You, uh, wanted to see it, didn’t you?”

They spared one another a glance, and then followed him inside. 

Edric Telara, as it so happened, was a sympathizer from years back. Cassian had... _ inherited _ him. It was an odd, somewhat callous way to put it, but it was accurate: the officer who had initially cultivated the relationship had long since died. Cassian had mentioned, when they’d been discussing the meet-up, that Telara had initially had trouble accepting him as a replacement. It was understandable. Informants, as a matter of course, couldn’t afford to be careless with their trust.

And that was part of why Jyn knew, almost immediately, that something was wrong.

He offered his hand to her. “Good to meet you, uh…?”

“Kestrel,” she replied, accepting the handshake. It had been a while since she’d used that one.

“Used to know a girl named Kestrel. Wonder what happened to her…” He shook his head, began leading them through his shop. It was odds and ends, wiring and spare parts, mechanics’ tools, small sheets of durasteel and plasteel. Toward the back, there sat a cabinet, the split between its doors adorned with a very prominent lock. Jyn suspected it held weapons. “They usually don’t send him with a partner. Not that you being here’s a bad thing. Recruitment must be up, huh?”

“We’re not here to chit-chat.” Cassian’s face was impassive. “You know why I called you.”

“Sorry. Just trying to be polite.” Telara stopped, looked back toward the door. “There’s not, uh… There’s not a lot of news lately.”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t got anything.”

Jyn swallowed. It wouldn’t be a complete waste, coming here; they’d had the chance to top off their fuel reserves, buy some new gear (including a holster), stock up on food and water. But it would certainly be irritating -- and another sign that something wasn’t quite right.

“There have been rumors. Lots of interest in Wild Space these days, I guess. And Tolonda and Merel.”

Jyn and Cassian’s eyes met, briefly. One of their potential worlds was in Tolonda.

“Anything coming out of Sarnix, Varada, Wazta, Trilon?”

The skin between her shoulder blades crawled. None of those sectors was relevant to them. A couple of them may have bordered on those they’d be scouting; she wasn’t sure, having never been the type to memorize maps. She expected Cassian to lie while on the job. It was what he did. But the fact that he was being this evasive with a contact meant that he’d been picking up on exactly what she had, and that the angle of the meeting had changed.

Her fingers twitched toward her weapons.

“Wazta, maybe, but I don’t know about the others.” Telara shrugged. “Like I said, not much news.”

Old-style hinges creaked. Wood scraped against wood. Jyn turned, body going taut, readying itself for action. The door to the shop clattered against the wall. The man who walked in was young, younger even than her, dressed in starched linens and leather new enough to still retain its gloss.  _ Rich kid _ . Looking for a little excitement, maybe, out here on the edge of things. He paused at the threshold, taking in the three of them. His larynx moved up, down.

“Oh, um.” He lowered his eyes and started walking, very pointedly, toward the side of the store opposite from where they stood.

Cassian clapped Telara on the back. He jumped. “Looks like you’ve got a customer. We’ll leave you to him.” He looked at Jyn, and she nodded. “Thank you for the tour, old friend.”

They started to leave.

“Wait!” Telara called after them. “Do you...do you have a place to stay?”

Jyn felt her senses sharpen, her heart rate increase.

“We have a room at the inn, on the next street over.”

The man half-smiled, bobbed his head. He was breathing hard, again. “Ah. Good.”

Cassian gave him a tight smile, then planted a hand on Jyn’s back and pushed her, gently, toward the door.

The first handful of steps they took, once they’d gotten outside, were casual, even, measured. They kept their gaits light. Glanced around. Cassian gestured in the direction of what she assumed was the inn he’d mentioned. It wasn’t until they’d rounded a corner, until they were sure that Telara couldn’t see them, that they began to hurry. Cassian’s hand hovered over his holster. Jyn was aware, very keenly, of the weight and shape of her truncheon, pressing into her side and upper thigh, cold and stiff and comforting.

“Well,” she said, “this mission is turning out to be a lot more...interesting than they made it sound.”

“It wouldn’t be us, if it wasn’t.”

“You have a point.” They moved past an alley. Her gaze swung toward it, eyes darting up walls, toward windows, toward roofs. “At least some of the information he gave us was useful.” And at least Cassian had thrown him off their trail.

“If any of it is even reliable.”

“He’d have no reason to lie, if it’s a set up.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

It occurred to her that their conversation was veering into too-familiar territory. She decided to stop talking.

They had landed in a docking bay on the eastern side of the outpost, where the throb of commerce was abruptly halted and the primary streets opened up and emptied, like tributaries, into a wide, partially segmented space. They were nearly there. The steady drone of countless craft landing and taking off, of air being displaced, of engines firing and warming up and cooling down, of dock workers shouting and exclaiming, drifted back, wafted over them. Jyn could see some of the ships. She could see the lights.

A woman stepped out from the shadow of a doorway. She grinned.

“Hey, there!”

To her credit, she managed to raise her blaster nearly half of the way before Jyn’s truncheon connected with the side of her neck.

In the next instant, she and Cassian were running, sprinting toward the docking bay, and then skidding to a stop, scrambling to turn back as a group of Stormtroopers spilled out from a cross street. There was a high pitched screech near her ear, a hiss, an eruption of plaster. Cassian’s arm around her shoulders, pushing her head down. The strange, red-orange, barely-there glints of light accompanying blaster bolts. They dropped and all but threw themselves around a corner, down another street.

People began to scream. Vendors dove under their booths. Restaurant patrons rushed from open-air seating to the relative safety of the indoors. Most of them, anyway; some took up defensive positions, pulled out weapons of their own. Jyn wondered whether she should be grateful to them or annoyed at their foolishness.

Cassian spat. “Dammit!”

“What?”

They squeezed into a space between buildings that barely qualified as an alley, knees bent, backs to one of the walls, close together, side by side. Cassian was tugging at his pistol; he’d gone with it over the rifle, due to its lower profile.

“The retention release.”

She gaped at him. “Are you kidding me?”

“No.”

“Your new holster…”

“...is on the ship.”

“Andor, you are brilliant at what you do.” She paused. “But you’re also an idiot.”

“Yes, I know. You can insult me all you want for it later. But right now, I could use some help.”

Heavy footfalls sounded off to the right, in the street, joined by the distorted, tinny voices of men speaking through plasteel-encased microphones. They were moving closer, and quickly. Jyn’s thumb slid over Cassian’s, slipped under it.

“Maybe if we both…”

A blaster discharged, mere meters away. Someone cried out.

They pressed down on the release together, were rebuffed. “What ever did you do to this thing?”

The footsteps drew parallel to them. Jyn turned.

She had to twist the truncheon, pointing the end of it down, moving it upwards so that it wouldn’t strike the opposite wall. It came up under the trooper’s arm, smacking his elbow with a loud crack, causing his fist to pop open, his blaster to clatter to the ground. She took a step. Twisted the stick again. Struck his hip, swept it upwards, into his armpit, locking it behind his shoulder. Leveraged him forward. Brought his head into contact with her knee.

It hurt, like hell. But it hurt him quite a bit more. 

He crumpled, and she hit him again, on the back of the neck.

And then looked up, into the barrel of another blaster.

“...no.”

She heard the shot. Winced. Felt her body flood with an emotion that she couldn’t quite name, an emotion she’d felt far more often over the course of her life than she likely should have. There was fear involved, but there was also a calm acquiescence, an acceptance of the fact that the end was on its way.

She watched as smoke began to rise from a hole in the Stormtrooper’s chest.

Two blaster bolts raced past her head, dropping another pair of unfriendlies. Cassian grabbed her arm, tugged her backwards.

His pistol was still at his hip; he’d picked up the one the first trooper had dropped. 

“Let’s go,” he growled.

The alley was blessedly short, and they sidled down it as quickly as they could, and then broke into a run, heading in the general direction of the docking bay. Instead of connecting with the main road that they’d been on before, this street curved sharply to the east, taking them into a small residential area. Worry closed around Jyn’s heart. Behind them, she could hear the sounds of a firefight; those who’d chosen not to hide were fighting back, and if nothing else, they’d hold the Imperials off. But if they got through, and came this way…

Well, she very much hoped that they didn’t.

Cassian was right: she’d become a big fan of hope, in recent times.

After several moments, a roar filled the air, and her attention was drawn upward. A ship hovered, turning in midair, so near that she was surprised she couldn’t feel the backdraft from it. They were close. They were very, very close.

“This way!”

A street to the left, short. At its end, the main road.

_ “I’ve found them! Over here!” _

Boots, stomping. Fewer than there had been, but still too many. Far enough back, though. Far enough back.

Most of the dock workers watched them with interest as they sped across the bay. A few, however, ran to intercept them. One managed to get himself between them and the ship, holding up his hands, shouting something about the name of the Empire. Cassian tucked his shoulder inward and bowled him over.

Once on board, they all but collapsed into their seats. Cassian’s fingers raced over the console; his knuckles went white around the throttle.

“What if they’ve tethered us?”

“We’ll break it.”

The engine’s song filled the interior of the ship. They lifted off the ground; Jyn’s nails dug into the underside of her seat. She waited for the sensation of arrested momentum.

It never came. 

Some time later, when the rush of battle had worn off and they were cruising, silently, in hyperspace, Jyn left the cockpit and made her way back to the cabin. She walked past her own bunk, knelt down in front of Cassian’s. Had a thought. Went warm with it.

When she returned, he was sitting back, staring at the great, heaving mass of blue-white, expression unreadable. They were headed to one of the red herring sectors he’d mentioned; they’d spend a bit of time orbiting a world there, putting on as if it interested them, and then make the jump to one of their actual targets. There was no guarantee, if they were being followed, that their tail wouldn’t stay with them through the second jump. But it was better to try than to do nothing.

She stepped up behind him. Dropped something into his lap. He started.

“What…” It was the new holster. With a sigh, he swivelled in his seat and looked up at her. “I’m never going to hear the end of that, am I?”

“No. You’re not.”

“Well, thank you.” He reached out, touched her knee. “How’s this?”

She took a moment to consider. It did hurt, still, if she thought about it; she figured she’d have a hell of a faceplate-shaped bruise in a few hours. But she’d had much worse injuries, and endured much worse pain. “It’s all right.”

His hand stayed there. His fingers curled around the back of her leg. Their eyes locked.

At some point, there were things they were going to have to say. A lot of things.

“Good.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in getting this chapter up! It's far more sedate than the last, but it does continue the theme of Completely Unnecessary Physical Contact. :)
> 
> Also, I made a slight edit to chapter two. I decided I was not happy with "thankfully, it didn't come to that," and replaced it with a short description of the ship taking off.

Exiting hyperspace wasn’t nearly as bad as entering it. It still carried with it the promise of dislocation, the sense that one was not where one should rightly be. But, in the main, it felt like  _ catching up _ , like reacquainting oneself with a longed-for aspect. The weight of gravity and the pressure of inertia receded, and the sensation that was left behind was something like release.

She sat back. Clutched her knee to her chest, bent it too far, winced. Beneath her trousers, it was an angry mottle of green, purple, yellow. She hadn’t landed the hit quite right. She’d known as much the moment it had happened, but until she’d inspected it in the fresher, she hadn’t known just how far off she’d been. She was loath to waste bacta on something like it. There were wraps in her pack. She’d use one of them, instead, when next they were on land.

Cassian was sleeping, and had been since shortly before they’d gone faster-than-light. Before that, they’d been in Sarnix, and had spent two and a half hours completing an orbit of one of the sector’s worlds. Hadn’t been a bad world, all things considered: mountainous, moderate, not particularly lush, not particularly barren. Had been close to a trade route, too close. And had, in any case, been meant to be a decoy.

She glanced at the chrono on the console. Six hours, since their last transition. Nearly fourteen since they’d escaped Zorii. Fatigue had bunched up and come together behind her eyes, tugging down the lids. There was a ledge, to her right, with a cup on it, and it was empty. They only had so much caf, and Cassian would have his own watch to get through. It was a strange thing to her. She had run on far less sleep, for far longer stretches of time, on far too many occasions in the past. More than one ally-of-the-moment had remarked on her distaste for rest.

Maybe it was the monotony of watching endless blueshift.

Maybe it was how hard she was trying not to think.

_ Listlessness _ .

It had been a long time; a long, long time since she’d cared enough to feel this way, to burn with the sting of loss. It was the price of attachment, always. She’d known that. She’d thought she’d learned her lesson. Apparently, it hadn’t sunk in. She leaned back, regarded the ceiling. The sides sloped downward, toward a central square that bulged toward the floor, capped by the tight grating of an access panel. She was tempted to lift herself up and see which systems it led to, just for the sake of occupying her time and mind.

Instead, she leaned forward and reached upwards, toward the hyperdrive input. They were bunny-hopping, taking a roundabout course to their next target, spending as little time as possible in normal space. Somewhere off to the right, near the copilot’s chair, lay the coordinates Cassian had drawn up for the next jump; she’d memorized them shortly after he’d handed them to her. But she’d never ridden in this class of ship, let alone piloted one, and her unfamiliarity slowed her calculations. He’d given her instructions and a rudimentary walkthrough, and she’d paid attention while he piloted, besides. It was enough, more than. But knowledge alone couldn’t replace direct experience.

He hadn’t wanted to sleep. He’d been stubborn (she wasn’t any different, truth be told, and it was likely the only reason she’d been able to insist). But he’d looked like hell. The exhaustion she’d seen in him when they’d first left Yavin 4, that had been clinging to him for the entire mission, had blossomed, darkening his eyes, drawing down his jaw, seeping into the lines around his mouth. His seat had seemed to fold over him. When he’d finally given in, and stood, the hitch to his movements had been more obvious, and he’d favored his left side, strongly.

He needed a hell of lot more than they’d given him. But, well, times were as they were, and as he’d said, there were... _ consequences _ .

The drive sputtered, and began to spool. There was still a minute or two before they could shift, but her body had already begun to tense in anticipation. Her lungs filled. Air whistled past her lips. 

She’d watched him. Three hours in, bored, curious, she’d walked to the cabin, footfalls soft and silent, and peered around the partition between their bunks. She’d thought of all the unconscious throats slit in her presence, of all those she’d slit herself. She’d thought of the long nights she’d lain with her fingers curled around the hilt of a vibroblade, of shallow sleep, of hair-trigger reflexes, of knots of tension, thick and permanent, along shoulders, at the base of spine and neck and skull. Her stomach had clenched, and then her heart had swelled.

She didn’t have to be that way, with him.

She hoped he had come to the same realization. Hoped a few other things, too, if she was being honest.  _ He stayed. People don’t stay without a reason. _ While he slept, his face was soft, and the planes of his body begged for companionship.

The ship hummed and whirred. The colors of the overhead display shifted, computer confirming their plotted course, and she grabbed the drive shaft, took a few more deep breaths. This vessel had a click to it, she’d begun to notice. Beneath all the other noise, it was there, steady and rhythmic, like the beating of a heart. In the pregnant moments before entering hyperspace, it seemed to grow louder. She wondered if it might help to focus on it.

Right before she initiated the jump, it vanished.

Her teeth clamped together. Her grip tightened. The display had changed, again, and the air was filled with the sharp whooping of the alarm. Something had pinged on the full-spectrum transceiver. She swung toward its control suite, hesitated as she recalled Cassian’s instructions and her own observations. Cursed when the data came through on the viewer. There was a ship. After all this time, there was a ship. It was still some distance off, but based on its heading, it was coming toward them.

She looked at the drive shaft. The hyperdrive was spooled and ready to go. But while the sensors could pick up the ship, it wasn’t yet close enough to get a proper view on-screen.  _ Fourteen hours _ . That long of a gap… It might be Imperial, might be a tail. It might be nothing of importance. Would it make a difference, in the long run? The safe thing to do was to treat it as a threat regardless, to add an extra hop or two onto their route. But knowing for sure -- and knowing the type of ship being flown -- had its advantages over blind assumption. She liked being informed. She liked details. Details had saved her life, more than once.

Blowing threats up had usually done the trick, too. She felt a powerful urge to reverse course, hop onto the guns, dive on in and take the thing out, damn the consequences.

_ Be smart, Jyn _ . If it was Imperial, then shooting it down would draw even more attention to them. And it was a safe bet that the response would involve more than just one ship.

From behind, she heard boots clanging on metal. Footsteps at a near run. She’d wanted to push herself further, let him sleep longer. He wouldn’t have been happy about it, but, well. He’d have gotten over it. She looked at the viewer again. The image of the ship updated, grainy lines resolving into a trapezoid flanked by twin triangles. Still not clear, not entirely. But it had gotten closer. It had definitely, definitely gotten closer, and that fact would have to do.

She waited just long enough for Cassian to enter the cockpit and sit down, then launched them out of realspace. He was thrust back. Her ribcage collapsed, or might as well have. The drone of the alarm dropped off, and the ship beat again, beneath her and around her. 

“What happened?” he asked, when they’d settled beyond transition.

“Picked up a ship.”

“Doing what?”

She turned toward him, whole body, seat and all. Her knee knocked against his; a mild burst of pain spread along the side of her thigh. She maintained contact, anyway. “Cruising. In our direction.”

His lips thinned. “Following us, then?”

“I didn’t stick around to find out for sure, but that’s what it looked like.”

He sighed. He ran his hands over his face, paused at his temples, dragged them through his hair. The flesh beneath his eyes was still puffy and bruised with fatigue. He needed a shave -- not that she minded the scruff. “We’ll have to do something about that.” There was a pause. His head tilted, his eyes swept over her. “I’ll chart us a new course, but…” He moved, pressing their knees harder together. “You should go and get some rest, yourself.”

She was like him. So much so. “And if that ship really was a tail?”

He shrugged. “We won’t re-enter normal space for five hours. If you’re worried, you at least have that much time.”

_ And if, without K-2, you get lonely? _ It occurred to her that, despite the fact he’d been fewer than a dozen meters away, she’d missed him.

“Right.” She rose, the movement further shrinking the space between them. “See you on the other side.” As she walked by, she dragged her fingers over his shoulder. She thought she heard him catch his breath.

* * *

On his side of the console, to the left of the viewer, there blinked an indicator light, red glow pulsing in time with the steady beep of a soft, low tone. 

They were touching down on a moon in the Pelgrin sector, its climate hot and sticky, moreso even than Yavin 4. The ruins of a settlement lay half a kilometer to the east. They’d detected lifeforms there, but they were few, and small, and their movements followed the disorganized patterns of the non-sapient. Whoever had lived there had been gone for some time.

Cassian had taken them through two additional jumps, each lasting three and a half hours. Jyn had woken halfway through the second, wanting to be annoyed at him for permitting her to be out for so long, understanding and appreciating it instead. Her thoughts had buzzed with an echo, reverberating, bouncing, winding its way around her heart.

_ Good luck, little sister. _

It was still there, now. It repeated with the cadence of a mantra. Her skin itched along the arc sketched by her crystal. She swallowed.

They stilled and came to rest, and the vibrations of the engine, as it shifted to idling, spread over her feet, worked their way up her legs, settled into her thighs. Cassian hunched over, reached for a switch, a dial. The tone faded, replaced by the gentle lull of the ship itself. His eyes moved. His forehead creased.

“It’s a message from command.” A thrill sped through her, half excitement and half worry. He pulled a cylinder from his shirt pocket. “Give me a moment…” He pressed a narrow ribbon of flimsiplast to a flat section of console, and from the way he compared its contents to the message, she assumed it was a cipher, and a one-time pad, at that, if the Alliance was smart. She thought that they were. Short-sighted and fractious and unfair at times, but smart in most areas, when it counted. He paused, seemed to go back to the start, and then slumped back into his seat, tipping his chin toward the ceiling. Her skin prickled. 

His eyes closed, and his lips quirked upward. “They’ve done it.”

“Done what?”

“Here.” He grabbed her wrist, gave it a tug. Not forceful; a suggestion. She caught his gaze, hesitated, moved with his hand, leaned over him, and then over the controls. The lines of the message were a vibrant green set against a field of black. She didn’t have the patience to decode them.

“What’s it say?”

He moved, and his face nearly touched the side of hers. She could taste him when he spoke. “ _ Fuse lit; target disabled. Mission parameters unchanged. _ ”

It took her a moment, longer than it should have. When it struck her, she fell back, hard; the seat pivoted away from him. She felt dizzy. Dissociated. Old thoughts, familiar thoughts, hated thoughts, clambering for attention, and then drifting, harmlessly, away. She had doubted. She had been focused and driven and, yes, hopeful, but beyond all of that, she had doubted. And she had gotten so good at shoving uncomfortable things aside that she hadn’t even noticed.

She sure as hell noticed the relief, though. And the elation that followed it.

Cassian was watching her, waiting. His expression was caught between states. She grinned at him, moved toward him, grabbed his arms. Found herself hovering above him, knees touching the edge of his seat, bruise aching. His hands gripped her sides, and then moved up, pressed into her shoulder blades. His fingers flexed, squeezed. The light was catching in his eyes, and the sun was casting shadows, and the shadows were interspersed by slivers of warmth. 

His features were soft, as soft as they’d been when she’d looked in on him. His gaze drifted down, then back up. 

“We need to celebrate this.” He hoisted himself up. The outside of his thighs touched the inside of hers. She straightened and stepped backwards, and her calves struck the co-pilot’s chair. When he moved to exit the cockpit, they were close enough for the whole of his body to brush against the whole of hers.

Slivers of warmth. She pushed her tongue into the hollow of her cheek. “What are you doing?”

His steps faded down the corridor. He didn’t respond.

She sat, and fidgeted. It was odd, how she could feel hopeful, and yet also feel paralyzed. It had never been a problem in the past. If she wanted, she took. And she wanted, right now. She wanted very, very much.

He returned with a flask. She sniffed.

The chrono was an angry orange beacon.  _ Fourteen hours _ . It hadn’t been, yet. There were a couple of hours yet to spare, and it wasn’t foregone that the timeframe meant anything, anyway.  “Drinking on the job? You sure that’s a good idea?” And there was, of course, the wanting. 

“Usually, no, but these are special circumstances.” He unscrewed the top. “And it’s not much; you won’t get drunk off of it.” He took a swig.

“How would you know?”

He gave her a look. “Somehow, I doubt you’re a lightweight.” He held the flask out to her, flicking it in her direction. There had been nights, several more than there should have been (hell,  _ dozens _ more than there should have been), when she’d wasted time and a fair amount of credits at a tavern or cantina. She realized, resignation settling into the pit of her stomach, that at least a few of those nights must have made it into her file.

She released a breath and accepted the flask. “You surprise me, Cassian.” The liquor burned, pleasantly, and lingered on the back of her throat. It had a sweet, smoky aftertaste. She’d never cared much about quality, save for when it served a character or a job; the only thing that mattered was that the stuff worked. But she could tell that this was of decent vintage.

She wondered if it was typical of what he drank. She wondered what other indulgences he allowed himself.

“How so?”

She passed it back. Their fingers touched. “You’re professional. And this isn’t very.”

He chuckled. “Even professionals need to relax from time to time.”

She couldn’t imagine him ever relaxing. She also couldn’t argue his point.

His posture decayed. He slumped, legs splayed, knees relaxed. His eyes roved over her face. “Tell me something good.”

She frowned. “What?”

“Something good, that’s happened to you.”

The flask had returned to her hand. She took a moment, considering. Savored her next swallow. In her chest, there unfurled a tendril of mirth. “Is that an order?”

His smile was slow, as slow as his answer. “Yes.”

“I’m not very good at following orders.”

“Well, then think of this as practice.”

She waited a beat, then took another sip. “You first.”

His smile widened. The lines around his mouth and eyes were shallow. She wanted to deepen them. “You’re not doing well at your practice.” He sighed. “But...all right.”

He took the flask from her and peered out onto the world, the muscles along his neck and shoulders slackening. He drank, and resettled himself. “My group had just thrown in with the Alliance. There’d been a lot of in-fighting about it, and there were people who left, because they thought the Alliance wasn’t much different from the Grand Army… But, ah, that’s besides the point.” He regarded the flask. “I was very young, and they held me back, for a long while. I understand it now, but at the time, it wasn’t what I was used to, and I thought that they...didn’t value me.” He drank again. “I was finally given my first mission, and I was so nervous, even though all I had to do was watch and listen. I didn’t want to kriff it up. My mark was going to be having a meeting on a patio. I found some local clothing and sat in a doorway nearby, thinking there was no way he wouldn’t notice me. But he didn’t. I heard  _ everything _ he said, and he never even looked in my direction. Children are invisible to some, I suppose. When I went back to base, the general I reported to, he...put his hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eye, and said, ‘excellent work, son; keep it up. We’re lucky to have you.’ No one had spoken to me that way in years. I hadn’t found K-2 yet, but…” He trailed off. The light in his eyes dulled. “Well.” He jutted his chin in her direction. “Your turn.”

She wanted to ask him questions. She wanted to know what he’d been about to say. But she knew he’d put her off, and so, instead, she took a moment to think. “When I was...six, I think, my mother took me to one of the beaches on Lah’mu. Where we lived, there wasn’t anyone around for kilometers, but there, there were...what seemed like  _ tons _ of people. I met this other little girl. Shit, what was her name?” Her brows drew together. “I can’t believe I don’t remember it. But we hit it off, the two of us. Spent the whole day. She taught me how to swim along with the waves, so we could ride them, and how to build things in the sand. When it was time for me to go, she hugged me, and we talked about what we’d do the next time we saw each other.” She shook her head. Her skin had begun to flush. “Never saw her again. Never even went back to that beach. My parents decided it was too risky.” Cool metal touched her lips. She tipped it back, back; a few drops pooled on her tongue. She eyed the flask and scowled. “It’s out.”

“As I said, it wasn’t much.” His chest rose and fell, steady. “I couldn’t help but notice that that wasn’t a very happy story.”

She shrugged.  _ Neither was yours, at the end. _ “Orders.”

He nodded, and his gaze fell. They passed a few moments in silence.

“Cassian.”

“Hmm?”

Nerves danced along her spine and sternum. “About, um…” She was about as good at this as she was at dealing with her own shit, which is to say that she wasn’t good at it at all. “About K-2SO…” The sentiment hung, full and heavy, in the space between them.

His pause stretched long beyond the silence that had come before. She worried he might not answer.

“He would have agreed with you, about this being unprofessional,” he said, at last. “I’m sure he’d have had some statistic at hand that proved it was a bad idea.”

“And you would have done it, anyway.”

“Yes. But...I really wouldn’t have minded hearing him complain. I never did.”

Jyn chewed her tongue, looked out the window. She wanted to know, suddenly, about his loss, about all of it. She wanted to take his hand and walk back with him through his history, to dissect it, to understand it, to shield him from the pain of it. To share the burden of it. And she wanted the same from him. She wanted him to ask; she wanted an excuse to tell him how, right up until the moment she’d realized that the Death Star had been destroyed, she’d still thought her father might not be the man she’d spent most of her life longing for him to be. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d wanted to share that much with someone. She couldn’t be sure that she ever had. 

“We’re not very good at celebrating, are we?” Her eyes shifted back to him.

He huffed. “No, I guess we’re not.” 

He pushed himself back into his chair, eyes closed, thumb and forefinger bracketing the bridge of his nose. The flask knocked against his knee. He peered down at it, spun toward the door. Stood up. “I’m getting us more.”

* * *

The ruins were overgrown. Cracks spread over floors and walkways, and through them grew grasses, flowers, shrubs. Vines crawled up and along the walls. Some quarters had become little more than piles of rubble, surrounded by the outlines of rooms and the vague suggestion of place.

They walked down a narrow street, fewer than two meters wide, in a section that had been better preserved. The buildings were blocky, identical, evenly spaced; none were more than three storeys tall. Cross streets appeared at regular intervals, each as straight and narrow as the road they moved along, and each marked by a set of three symbols, carved into the walls of the corner buildings. Jyn hadn’t seen this level of rigid planning outside of Imperial facilities. The similarity made the base of her neck itch, but the unfamiliar nature of the writing proved it was coincidental.

“Do you have any idea who they were?”

Cassian shook his head. “No. There aren’t any official records of a settlement here, and it was already abandoned when our scouts first found it.”

“Huh. Strange.” Made her feel uneasy.

She reached for the canteen at her hip. Her shirt was clammy with sweat; her hair clung to the back of her neck, to the sides of her face, to the underside of her cap. They’d taken the usual precautions, but even then, she suspected they’d come away sunburned. The water was warm; it soothed her throat all the same, as dry as it was, from both the heat and the lingering effects of alcohol.

They’d shared one more flask’s worth of whatever Cassian had stowed away (how much more did he have?), enough to feel warm and giddy and to forget, just a little, while hanging on to their senses. Neither of them had brought up the past again. They stuck to light topics, safe topics, and, at times, to silence. Their legs had become entangled. He had rested his hand on the side of her calf, a few centimeters south of the joint, and her fingertips had traced his knuckles, and she had continued to not do any of the things she wanted to do. 

She’d asked that they remain on the ship past the fourteenth hour. They’d approached it, come upon it, moved beyond it. Nothing. Her temples had throbbed. When they’d begun their exploration, they’d planted mobile sensors around the ship, and hooked one each to their belts. Heavy, clunky things, and Jyn’s thigh was hot beneath hers, but they were well worth the trouble.

“We’ll need to sweep through the buildings.” Cassian paused. His head tilted back; his eyes climbed up a structure to their right. “There’s a lot here that I think we could use, but…” He pursed his lips, breathed. “It might not be worth it.

Jyn looked at the building he was considering, the one next to it, the one directly across from it. Up, at the rooftops, flat, at the ridge that ran along them, whose height she wanted to know. Past Cassian, at the next pair of side streets, at the hard, parallel corners that flanked them. “If we set up here, we’ll want to widen some of the streets.” And flatten half the place, really. “And if we set up somewhere else on the moon, we should destroy it.”

He nodded. “I agree. No sense giving our enemies a ready-made staging area.”

She peered off down the street. Some forty meters distant, there was what looked to be a square, its ground bisected by a long, thick root. She narrowed her eyes. “Hey.” She drew close to him, placed her hand on his lower back. He shifted toward her, and his upper arm and elbow pressed into her chest. “Let’s see what’s up ahead.”

So far, there had been little in the way of debris on their chosen route. But as they approached the square, the amount of it grew. There were bits of metal, hunks of rotting wood, pieces of furniture; children’s toys, covered in grime; droid parts, rusted half-through. Buildings were missing doors. Jyn wondered if there had been looters, and how long ago they might have come, and whether their activity was at all related to the reason the people who’d been here had left.

The root was only a few steps from the entrance to the square, and larger than she’d estimated, reaching halfway up her shin. Her gaze followed it off to the right, to where it tapered off and ended, just shy of a stoop. The space as a whole was circular; the buildings in the row along its edge were as logical and uniform as those in the rest of the settlement, and all of a single height, and spaced such that exactly four sat between each street. It was clear, here, from the litter dotting the ground, and from the jagged holes punched through many of the buildings, that there had, in fact, been looters -- and a fight. It would have been a brutal one, she was sure. The space bothered her. It had the looks of a killing field.

There were other roots, she noticed. At least five of them, chewing through stone and cobble, straining to escape the square.

“Jyn…”

She turned. The roots thickened, growing so large that she thought they might top out above her head, and feeding back into the base of a massive trunk.

Her eyebrows climbed, and she gasped.

She didn’t think she’d ever seen a tree so large. It wasn’t particularly tall; it rose only a meter or so past the buildings lining the square, and fell short of those in the row directly behind. But at its widest point, it obscured four buildings. Three limbs, each a quarter of the size of the trunk, arced upwards, one growing into and slowly destroying a wall, and from them hung webs of branches and long, mossy chains of leaves. It looked as if it were... _ unfolding _ . On one side, the branches spilled onto and bunched up in the corner of a roof. On all the others, they, and the tree itself, cast thick shadows, shielding a good-sized chunk of the square from the sun.

“Wow.” It was beautiful. It also made her even more wary. She pictured soldiers, hidden in the buildings behind it; tucked into the nook formed by the rear-most limb; lying on the roof, beneath the overhanging branches, rifles set for sniping.

“It’s incredible.” Cassian’s voice was low, almost a whisper. “It’s a shame we’d have to cut it down.”

“Yeah.” Funnel the enemy into the square. Block off the streets. Hold the detachment around the tree in reserve. Or, lure the enemy  _ to _ the tree, framing it as possible cover, and then spring an ambush. “A real shame.”

Vibrations spread down her leg, up her side, out into her midsection and lower back. Her heart skipped. She unhooked her handheld, its rhythmic buzzing sending pins and needles through her palm and forearm, and saw Cassian reach for his in turn. There wasn’t much, on the display. Basic information. It made her veins flood with an early hit of adrenaline. 

Their gazes met. His features hardened; his shoulders squared. He looked very much like the professional she’d named him as.

“There’s someone near the ship.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I *may* need a 6th chapter. I'm pretty sure that I won't, but I'm putting the possibility out there, just in case.
> 
> Anyway...ACTION!

They moved toward the southern side of the settlement at a jog. The ground sloped upward. She felt her bruise, rubbing against the fabric of the wrap. She felt the muscles in her thighs, contracting, tightening. The sleeves of her shirt ran to her elbows, and she pushed them up, and ran the back of her hand across her forehead, mopping up sweat. Her palms were slick; her gloves chafed against them. Dark splotches spread over Cassian’s clothes. She wanted another sip of water, but she forced it down, focused on breathing through her nose, kept her mouth closed. The hum of the handheld, hooked once more to her belt, was a constant, steady thing. It was starting to numb that part of her leg.

The ruins here were in greater disrepair. She and Cassian stepped around piles of rubble, hunched over, kept their backs and shoulders and heads below the cover line, ever angling toward the west. The sun was starting on its downward arc; the moon’s orbital and rotational direction put it at their backs. A boon for them. Most long-range viewing equipment filtered light, but someone approaching would, at least some of the time, have to rely on their own eyes.

He tapped her shoulder, tipped his head toward a section of wall at the settlement’s edge. It was crumbling on one side, slanting down to a horizontal edge that then, itself, dropped off. Green and yellow and red ran through it, crawled over it, reached toward its end and top. The vines were like arms, like hands. She gave him a single tight-lipped nod. They shuffled to it, fingers scraping against stone and dirt.

He turned and pressed his back to the wall, toward the side that had fallen. Sat. Retrieved their pair of electrobinoculars. She knelt beside him, shoulder to stone, feet arched. Ready to run.

He leaned around the edge.

Her ears were filled with the sound of her own beating heart.

He turned back toward her. “I can make out three.” He handed her the device and moved forward, just enough for her to be able to slide into his position.

His hand was on her shoulder blade; his face was at her neck. She ran her finger along the dial. They were higher up than the ship, and she could just make out its top through the flora that surrounded it. There was a Stormtrooper standing beside a tree, parallel to where the exhaust would be, cradling a blaster rifle, speaking into a comlink, gaze sweeping outward. Two others walked in a slow, expanding arc near the front of the ship.

A notion prickled at the back of her mind. It was there, palpable, but she couldn’t quite complete the thought.

Something was off.

She moved back into full cover. Cassian’s hand dropped; their closeness brought their knees together. “Can you take them from here?”

He reached for his rifle. Wrapped his hand around it. Left it where it was, slung to his back. “I can guarantee one, but after he goes down…”

_ The others will be alerted _ . And there was no telling, from here, whether there were more. “Right.” She looked out again. Leaves brushed against her chin, against the underside of her jaw. They would have to go back north, to where the terrain leveled out. There were clusters of trees and undergrowth there, some strangled by the same vines that were trying to claim the ruins. They could sneak back. Get close enough for pistol and automatic fire. It would take a while, and it would be a pain, but they could do it. She shifted her weight. A corner of her handheld struck the wall; its vibrations reverberated, intensified.

The thought began to take shape just as Cassian grabbed her upper arm and tugged her toward him.

His forehead was creased. His jaw was tight.

“Why haven’t they disabled the sensors?”

His words crashed over her, cold, starting at the top of her head, spreading over her skull and spreading down, landing and curdling in her stomach. They would have found them by now. There was no way they wouldn’t have. Her eyes darted back, forth. Toward the eastern edge. Down the slope. Back up, pausing on a mostly-intact building, its windows dark, partially obscured by tightly-packed tendrils of green and brown. The sensors at their hips hadn’t picked up anything. That said something, but sensors had a range, and soldiers knew all about ranges, or at least  _ she _ knew all about ranges, and how to stay out of them.

What did that say for her, in the moment?

“Okay,” he breathed. “We’ve got to make our way back, either way.” He was assessing the area in front of them. The movements of his head were slight, contained.

She wanted to act. They were open, here, and far too exposed, and her mind was racing. The enemy was in the west. The enemy wanted them to focus on the west. That meant, most likely, that they were coming from the east.

Unless, of course, the misdirection was the awareness of the misdirection.

She closed her eyes, for a second, and tried to push aside thoughts of Saw.

Her gaze snapped up, arced north. “This way.” She curled her arm around Cassian’s upper back, and together, they started running.

They hewed close to the apex of the slope, staying low, dodging between the highest walls. She pulled her blaster from its holster. Held it, one-handed, low, against her right side. Her fingers were wet and clammy, but the outside of her gloves were dry and sure. Cassian yanked his rifle around, snapped it to his chest. The alarm kept humming. She tried to find comfort in it.

_ It might mean they don’t know we know _ . It also might mean they didn’t care.

Dust tried to rise around their feet, and instead clung to the tops of their boots, weighted down by humidity. An animal made a call, a long, low creak; another answered in kind, some distance off. The air was thick. Jyn gulped at it, and it sank, hot and wet, into the bottom of her lungs. Her vision was narrowing, her senses were growing sharper. Preparing.

The walls rose and encased them. They were on a wide street, running between a large set of buildings, residential from their looks. The changeover had been abrupt. Quarters, in towns, sometimes flowed; Jyn knew this, because she had to. The bad parts, or the illicit parts, sometimes faded, gently, into the good parts, and somewhere in the middle lay a grey part, where the people from both sides would interact, and then pretend that they hadn’t. That liminal space, in her experience, was where the real business of the galaxy was conducted.

There were also places where there was no flow. This, it seemed to her, might have been such a place. And she knew that later, when she had time to process it, the look of the square would bother her, even more than it already had.

He fell behind her. They hewed close to one side of the road. The sun was mostly blocked, where they were. They were half in shadow, surrounded by muted tones. The sky above was a bright, vibrant contrast.

A second vibration trembled down her leg, off by a beat from the first. She stopped short. Her free hand sought out the wall beside her.

Cassian collided with her. They shared a look.

_ They’re here _ .

Eyes, drifting back. The path behind them, ahead of them: both clear. Across the way: windows, roofs; the space between houses. All clear. Jyn flattened herself against the wall, looked up, along their side. Checked for signs of movement. Damn the ridge on the roofline, damn the uncertainty of it, but there was nothing, nothing that she could see.

They were a couple of meters short of a four-way intersection. The width of the road, and the smooth, angular shape of the buildings, made it unlikely they’d be able to check the cross street without being seen. The approach would be from the eastern half of the street, probably, and she didn’t exactly have any qualms against fighting if she had to, but the assumption wasn’t worth the risk, and it’d be foolish to blow their major advantage, this far from the ship.

She’d be lying if she said a part of her didn’t itch to, anyway.

“Hey.” Cassian circled around her, keeping close. Jogged up ahead, to the corner house. There was a window, on the first storey, its glaze intact but rendered opaque by dirt and time. He lifted his rifle and pointed the butt toward it. “Let’s hope it’s glass.”

He heaved forward. A web of cracks, thin, delicate, spread outward, frosted the pane. Air whistled through his teeth. The rifle spun along the locus of its strap, and he took a step backwards and aimed.

She held her breath.

The window exploded inward. The sizzle of the bolt, and the shattering of the glass, seemed impossibly loud; the sounds joined together and sped off down the street, a pair of shallow echoes. Cassian used his gun to sweep the frame of the window, clearing shards, then hoisted himself up and through.

She thought she could hear something,  _ someone _ . Boots. Modulators. Static. Might have been her imagination.  _ But they’re somewhere nearby, aren’t they _ ? They might come across this window. They might guess at when it had been broken. When it came down to it, there were an awful lot of “mights;” always were. Cassian thrust a hand toward her, and she grabbed his forearm, just below his elbow, and pressed the ball of her foot into the side of the building. Levered herself up and over the sill. Landed near him, near enough to catch herself on him, hand on his chest. Glass crunched under her feet.

The buzz, alternating. One side, then the other.

_ They’re coming. They’re coming and they still might not know _ .

The house was dark, filled with a pungent, musty, moldy scent, the sort that crawled up sinuses and dug into the lungs. Sections of the walls and ceiling had gone black or green. There was furniture, some of it wood, most of it rotting. Toward the front, on the side that faced the cross street, there was an hydraulic door, its keypad dangling from a cluster of wires, and two windows, each with splotches of transparency. She took one; Cassian, the other. Nothing from the west, but from the east…

“Two.”

“I see them.”

They weren’t yet at the intersection, and were moving slow, considering the buildings around them. Searching. They hadn’t heard the discharge of the blaster rifle, or the shattering of the window -- or, if they had, they weren’t sure where the sounds had come from. She and Cassian had time. She caught his attention, tilted her head back the way they’d come, indicated herself. He gave her a nod.

The thought came, knifing through training- and experienced-induced focus, that they worked well together. It had first come on Jehda, but things had been different, then. It had felt strange. She’d wondered at it, decided it was professional respect. They’d done a lot more since then, much of it hammering home the point, and it didn’t feel strange anymore, and it also didn’t feel completely professional.

She liked it. She liked it quite a bit.

She hurried through the rest of the downstairs. At the rear, there was a door: hydraulic, like the other. Locked. She fingered the keypad, just to see, and was not at all surprised to find that it was dead. That was good for them. If they were located, then they could bottleneck the troopers at the windows, and there were only a few: two on three sides, one (the one they’d entered) on the fourth. She moved into the interior rooms. She spotted the leading foot of a staircase beyond a wall.

_ Roof access _ .

She looked up it, and let go a sigh, her shoulders sagging. Its second half, from the bend in its middle to the second storey landing, had fallen away. The gap was jumpable, she wagered, but there were questions of structural stability. No telling if the landing itself was unsound, or, at that, the whole second floor. Best not to chance it.

Back to the front. She took up position beside his window, across from him, noting how his head, his eyes, didn’t move. How they stayed on target.

“Back door’s shot.”

There was a pause before he replied. “If we have to, we take opposite sides, and call out.”

She nodded. “And what’s the plan until then?”

“What are your thoughts?”

Keep the advantage. “Let’s see where they go.”

She moved back to the other window. The troopers came upon the intersection, looked left, right, and she filled her lungs, wondering if they’d decide to depart from their heading, if they’d go and they’d notice. They should notice. Her entire body was vibrating with the certainty that they should and would notice.

They moved forward. She sighed, and briefly closed her eyes.

They came to edge of the house. Cassian slid down the wall. The barrel of his rifle was pointed toward the ceiling, and then it was angled, resting at the corner of the window. Jyn took her blaster in both hands. Waited until they were just on her. Dropped down, sat on the floor, legs spread out in front of her. Vibrations. Footfalls. Stones crunching. Voices crackling.

_ “What’s the story with these two, anyway?” _

_ “Hell if I know.” _

_ “Should be going after the ones who attacked the Death Star.” _

_ “You’re telling me.” _

Her muscles tensed. Her fingers flexed around her weapon. Cassian lurched up, stepped to the opposite side, stayed low. His eyes slid to her, and she pulled herself over the lip of her window’s bottom edge. The Stormtroopers had just passed by. She watched their blocky plastisteel-encased backs retreat down the street, watched them continue to turn, back and forth, glance down alleys, at the buildings to either side. Watched them pause at the next cross street and fall into defensive postures. Swing outward, blasters raised, before moving on. She would have been more thorough, if she were they. Hell, she had Cassian  _ had _ been more thorough. Saw’s voice, gruff, derisive, popped into her head.

_ Grunts. Cannon-fodder. Too simple for anything else _ .

Cassian joined her, settling into her side and matching her line of sight. She dipped her head and shifted her eyes back, in the direction opposite the Imperials, confirming there were no others, then lifted it to his face. They were close, again. Very close. Their breaths swirled together. It had been happening from the start, but it seemed to be happening more and more, as time went on.

She didn’t mind it. Even in the midst of all this, with her consciousness floating, and her skin prickling with the nervous heat of coiled energy, she didn’t mind it at all.

There were still those things that they needed to say.

They made their way back out into the streets after the troopers had passed out of sensor range. Darted through the intersection, and the one after that, and the one after that, finally turning right, turning westward, at the fourth. Moving faster than the enemy had been moving. Angling toward the ship, but also toward the treeline. Breathing. Hugging the sides. Her handheld was rubbing her thigh raw. The sun was at her back, and it was clawing at her neck, seeping through her shirt.

Their sensors went off again right as a Stormtrooper was rounding a corner, 40 meters ahead of them. His rifle locked into place under his armpit, opposite hand grasping the foregrip. Time slowed.

“Jyn!”

There was such urgency in Cassian’s call. He’d been calling for her, like that, for a good while, now.

Discharge. Her blaster was raised, but it wasn’t she who had fired the shot, and the trooper was shuffling back, ambling for cover. Cassian’s arm wrapped around her waist. He tugged at her, and she let him. They wound up in a sunken doorway, protected by the barest bit of concrete, her back to his front. Pressing back and up. His rifle was lifted parallel to his frame and to the building, and she was against him, snug, his hand now resting at her abdomen. Chest rising, falling. The world was hot, the day was hot, she was hot. And he, too, was hot, wherever he touched her.

The enemy was there. The enemy had seen them.

She leaned forward. A flash of white and black around beige brick; she fired, and the target dodged, and the bolt sank into the opposite wall, creating a small, black crater. Her handheld went dead. Cassian’s intake of breath was sharp in her ear.

“Well, that’s the end of that.”

No more advantage.

The Stormtrooper peered around the corner again, fired in tandem with her own shot. His bolt screeched past her head, past the doorway; hit the wall, sent bits of vine cascading into the street. Hers struck the center of his torso, and he convulsed and crumpled.

They paused for a moment. If he was one of the two they’d seen before, then the other would be approaching. Cassian moved so that he could better see around her. His hand slid to her hip.

Nothing. No one.

Running, again. Focusing on the corner. Watching. Waiting. Finger on the trigger. Her left leg was still buzzing. He’d be around there. Had to be. And for all they knew, there’d be more where he came from. They separated as they came up on the crossing, flattening against opposite walls. Edging slowly, carefully, weapons raised. The leg of the hostile she’d killed was stretched toward her section of street; she took care to avoid it. Leaned outward. All clear, on her side. Cassian’s brow creased -- all clear on his, as well. She frowned. Hiding, then. There weren’t many recesses in her direction, but she could see the mouth of an alley up ahead, and she centered her vigil on it.

“Anything?” she mouthed to him. He shook his head.

Someone had to make the first move. She took in the width of the street. It was on the narrow side. They could get across it, unscathed, if they were quick about it. It would draw the trooper out and after them, of course, but it wasn’t as if that could be avoided at this point. They’d already crossed the line into open confrontation.

“Shit.” Cassian’s eyes widened. She turned, glancing behind her.

“Oh,  _ hell _ .”

Five, not one. Jogging toward them.

He was the first to pop out, curling behind his rifle, side-stepping his way across the space. She rushed after him. The air cracked and sizzled and whirred. Two troopers fell, and then walls rose back up around them, and they ran, only a decimeter or two between them, casting about for a holdable position. They were nearing the edge, and the character of the buildings was sliding once more toward decay. There were openings that were not doors, and walls that had been halved, and not far distant there were frames without roofs, whose surfaces were carpeted in leaves.

“Why are there so many of them?”

“I don’t know.”

She thought of the conversation she’d overheard at the house. “Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to for two rebels.”

“It does seem that way, doesn’t it?”

Blaster fire. Spots of orange-red, racing past her upper arm, over her shoulder. A pathway, to the right.

“Over here.”

They turned down it, Cassian spinning and firing to cover them as they did so. The building on the left was missing a chunk of its rear half, but most of the front and sides were still standing, and if they could hurry through to the other side... Her eyes met his. She inclined her head, and he acknowledged her with a short nod, and they climbed in. A protruding brick caught her foot. Her palms struck the ground in front of her, rocks and bits of concrete palpable through her gloves, pistol trapped between hand and floor. She wrapped her fingers back around it and moved forward without missing a beat.

_ "They went this way!” _

She hopped over the opposite wall, settling her back to it, leg touching Cassian’s. Looked back and up, at the troopers passing, just,  _ just _ . He nudged her.  _ To the front. _ Conscious of heavy boots, footfalls bouncing off open walls, getting farther rather than closer, but not for long. Not for long at all.

Everything within her screamed to turn and face them at that very moment. Everything within her wanted a good, honest fight.

Instead, she continued to do the smart thing, the thing that wouldn’t leave her either dead or aching with yet another regret, and sped back out into the main street. While the front of the building was largely intact, there was an opening, square, where a window might once have been. Plenty big enough to peer through. Plenty big enough for the barrel of a blaster. They hunched around it. The Stormtroopers were across from them, now, hesitating. Sweeping this way and that. She leaned forward and took aim.

One of them collapsed.

The other two scrambled, getting off a few wild shots before dropping to the ground, seating themselves behind piles of rubble. Jyn sought one of them out. His leg twitched, but the shot landed past him, spraying a harmless geyser of dirt. Cassian fired, struck cover. Ducked back as a bolt whizzed past his head. Another smacked into the inside of the wall, near Jyn’s position, and she cringed at the sound of the impact.

She went to shoot again. A trooper was lifting his arm, rotating. The other was darting, on hands and knees, away from the building. Light glinted off a piece of metal, arcing through the air. Her tongue felt like cotton. It landed between them, below the hole, bounced back once, rolled. The sound of it was small, hollow; and then it was a fast, high-pitched beeping, and the tempo was increasing, and the volume was working its way up.

She locked eyes with him. For a heartbeat. For an eternity.

“Go.”

She turned and ran, and was aware of him running in the opposite direction. It was less than a meter’s difference, distance wise, but only a fool would run  _ in front _ of a grenade. She couldn’t think, there was no time to think, but still she thought, still she swore she could feel him at her back, and she wished one of them had been a fool.

The grenade exploded. She threw herself to the ground and covered her head with her hands and arms. There was a great roar, and the ground shook, and a shockwave, small but still noticeable, rolled along her body. Bits of brick and concrete fell from the sky, smashing into the ground around her. Something came down hard on her upper back. And something else landed on her calf, right below the joint, and forced her knee forward -- the same knee she’d already hurt.

She ground her teeth and dug her nails into the base of her own scalp. Pushed herself up, gingerly, shrugged the debris off her back, reached down and freed her lower leg. A stab of pain shot up her thigh as she rose to her feet. The front of her sensor was bashed in. She discarded it.

The air was barely breathable. She coughed into the crook of her elbow and looked back toward the blast, inching forward. For a handful of long seconds, clouds of dust obscured the street; when they cleared, they revealed a beige mass where the building had been, spilling forward, blocking the way. Her chest tightened. Her heart hammered; it felt like it was beating in a cage.

_ Cassian _ .

She couldn’t see him.

_ Not again. _

“Cassian!”

Her knee was on fire. She made it move, anyway. Faster, faster. She was breathing hard. Her mind and body were trying to separate. As if, somehow, she was making the jump to lightspeed, sans ship.

_ Not this again, please, no. _

When he’d fallen, on Scarif, she had thought… She had hesitated. They were supposed to make the climb together. They were supposed to get there together.

Where was he? Why hadn’t he answered her? She called for him again. Her voice was high and thin.

_ My name, now. The way you always say it. _

This was the price of attachment. This fear, this knot of grief, waiting to unfurl. Well, it was too late to walk it back, by a fair amount. He had stayed. He had come back. The only one, ever.  _ Don’t leave, now. Don’t leave _ .

She neared the remains of the building. A sound came from her left: shuffling, followed by distorted voices. Rage, incredible and potent and scorching enough to consume all else, took possession of her. She slid her hand to her holster and found it empty, realized she’d dropped her blaster. That was all right. Her hand closed around her truncheon, knuckles going white. Close quarters would better suit her mood, anyway.

She didn’t wait. She was burning up, sneering and eager. Rushing toward them, arm raised and bent, truncheon pointing backward. The first Stormtrooper tried to lift his rifle, but she extended her arm, struck his hand, grabbed his forearm and pulled him forward. Her elbow contacted the side of his head, and then she curled her arm under his, her shoulder butting up against his chest. Slid one end of the truncheon against his throat. Pushed back, on his arm, with her other hand. He stiffened and choked. She leaned forward; he began to fall along the slope of her leg, and she released the bar, heaved. Sent him stumbling back into the other trooper. As she stepped past him, she kicked him between his legs with her uninjured one.

_ If you killed him. _

The second was still collecting himself, trying to regain his balance. She whipped him in the thigh, to keep him hunched over.

_ If you kriffing killed him. _

Hit him in the back, to send him to his knees, arching, head up.

_ I will destroy you _ .

Thrust the end of the truncheon under his jaw. Moved her arm across him, angled the baton behind the back of his neck. Grabbed its end with her other hand, wrists snug against him. Pressed a foot to his chest, gave him a shove, and twisted, and he let out a strangled, gurgling sort of grunt before going limp.

There was a moan. A scraping sound. She whirled around and struck the first trooper again, the force of the impact vibrating up her arm. And then she hit him again. And again. And again. Until he was quiet. Until he was still.

The sound of her breathing was rough, harsh. Around her, the dust was still settling, floating slowly, gently down, defying the humidity. The vines nearby were covered in it. Now that she’d finished fighting -- and now that there wasn’t anything humming on her belt -- there was a silence, huge and surreal. There was something contracting around her heart. And under her shirt, there was a spot of heat, uncomfortable, on the center of her breastbone.

She picked one of the rifles up off the ground and backed away from the bodies. She wasn’t completely sure that they were dead, and now that her anger was fading, she didn’t really care. She needed to get to the other side of the wreckage. She needed to see.

_ Don’t leave me. _

Someone was coming.

Hope. Still, she pressed herself to the remains of a nearby wall. She wasn’t as good with a rifle as she was with a pistol, but she could make due. Make due quite well, some might have said; she could kill with it, in any case.

Suddenly, she was very sick of killing.

A man appeared around a corner, covered in dust, sputtering, clutching a blaster. Leaning, just a bit, to the left.

He called her name.

It was as if her lungs had been empty and screaming, and could finally be filled. She took great, greedy gulps of air. Her knee hurt. She was limping toward him, and her knee hurt, and the intensity of the emotion flooding through her was making her feel weak.

“Jyn,” he said again. He paused and looked at her, relief plain in the change of his expression and posture, in the way his chest heaved and his stomach dipped. He swung the rifle to his back and hurried to her, wrapping his hands around her shoulders; she gripped his upper arms, fiercely. She was trembling. She thought she might fall into him.

She wanted to.

It was odd, she thought, how they could so often touch, so often wind up flush against one another, but how now, in a moment like this, they could maintain separate spheres. She was as keenly aware of the space between their upper bodies as she’d ever been of a lack of it. He touched her neck, and she closed her eyes, and her hands moved to his chest, but there was still distance, there. More even than there’d been on the turbolift.

All that wondering. All that thinking, and hoping, and she’d once again thought he might be dead, and still.  _ Still _ .

“Cassian,” she whispered. He could never leave. He could never, ever leave.

“You were limping,” he said.

“My knee. From the other day.”

“You told me it was all right.”

“It was.” Talking without talking. “Now it’s not.” Her hands moved again, to his sides. “You were limping, as well.”

He sighed. “It’s not from this.” He stepped back from her. “We need to get moving.” His thumb drifted up, sliding across her jawline, before falling completely away.

They took it slow. They needed to. The flesh around her knee was a riot, and he held her at times, arm around her midsection, the way she’d once held him, not so long ago. The underbrush beyond the treeline, when they’d gotten to it, was a tangled mass. It was nice, being in the shade. Behind them, the sun was sinking, and its rays were orange and slanted, bathing pockets of flora in golden light.

When they came up on the ship, there was only one Stormtrooper still near it, and no others appeared when he dropped. They approached it warily, nonetheless, circling, moving as fast as their bodies allowed.

The hatch was a thing of longing. She wanted to unwrap her knee, give it some proper care, maybe. Collapse into her seat, let the tension drain out of her. Wanted him next to her, close, arm's length, safe and within her reach and sight for at least the next several hours.

But she couldn’t have any of that just yet.

It took them a little over an hour. He covered the top of the craft, climbing the access ladder at a measured pace. She combed over the bottom, starting aft, working her way forward. It wasn’t a large ship, comparatively speaking, but they had to be thorough. Might not complete the mission -- hell, might not get back to the Alliance in one piece -- if they weren’t.

In the end, there turned out to be two, both on the underside, separated by several meters. Both showing the wear of space travel, their cases bearing the telltale burns of re-entry.

Trackers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, y'all -- they'll stop being idiots soon. :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all, so much, for reading. I appreciate you immensely!
> 
> More notes/explanation at the bottom.

“At Zorii, do you think?”

“Maybe.”

They were in the cockpit, and he was emptying his bag onto the floor. His movements were hurried, as hurried as those that had taken them hobbling through the interior, sweeping it as they had the outside; as hurried as those that had taken him to his bunk, and then had taken both of them to the front. Personal effects mingled with bits of hardware. They skittered across the durasteel.

“Either way, Telara is a clue.” He sifted through the junk, retrieved a transmitter; a com card; a case containing a disc. “Eighteen years… I was still with the Separatists, technically.” And she might still have been on Coruscant, depending. The implications were plain.

What made a man turn after so many years? She thought of Bodhi. She knew what had made him defect. She respected it, cherished it for what it meant, and for the way it had salved her personal wounds. She doubted it had been the same for Edric. Or, if it had, then it had been because the wrong person had managed to get his ear.

Cassian dropped into the pilot’s seat and slid the disc into a slot on the the edge of the console. The empty case clattered to the floor. She couldn’t see the display from where she was, but she knew what he was doing. They hadn’t bothered to check whether the systems were actually compromised. Better not to; better just to assume. Avoid poking around, giving themselves away too soon.

She eyed the card and the transmitter. They were resting up and off to one side. He was going to bypass native communications, on top of all the rest. “Who are you planning to message?”

“I have a contact. Outside the chain of command.” He didn’t look at her when he said it. She frowned.

There’d been a raid, when she was young -- all of 11, old enough to know better than to keep yearning for the first man who’d raised her; young enough not to know how to stop. The outpost had been small, on a world on the edge of things, a world dealing with only a slight Imperial presence, still managing to cling to its own flag. People had lived free, mostly. They’d been able to believe in the promise of casual resistance.

The cadre had needed supplies, and Saw had needed Imperial accoutrement. He’d been planning some operation, for some other world; she couldn’t remember, now, what it had been, or whether it had ever happened. It probably never had. This station, in this place, had been an easy target. Jyn had already seen and experienced enough to know that it ought to have been routine, in-and-out.

She’d been used to being sent on ahead, with the other kids. Used to slipping through gaps, climbing through narrow spaces, going where the older, larger soldiers couldn’t. She’d been growing, and aging, out of that, and so this time, she’d been at the rear. They’d approached at dawn. The sun had been at their backs. A few soldiers had waited, crouching, at the perimeter. There’d only been two Stormtroopers on patrol, and each had walked by the advance team, unawares, and found themselves disabled. The lines had moved forward.

The door to the outpost had been blown open. The cadre had begun to move in.

Detonators. Pressure plates.

There’d been no Imperials inside. No goods. Nothing but a trap, with the patrolmen, the  _ grunts _ , as bait. The initial blast had swept through the crew and sent the boy in front of her falling back, knocking her over, landing on top of her. He’d trembled. Breathed, shallow. So had she. She’d lain beneath him, dazed, staring up at a smoke-filled sky, listening to the cries and shouts of those up ahead, nostrils flaring, lungs aching, and wondering if it was the day she was going to die. 

It had been an inside job. There had been nothing more certain, more obvious, than the fact that it had been an inside job.

Saw had frightened her, afterwards, with the way he’d torn through the cadre. Frightened her more when he’d executed those he was convinced were responsible, despite the impassioned protests of several that they’d had nothing to do with it. The entire event had shaken her. And he had fallen further along the dark, downward spiral that would isolate him from the larger Rebellion and drive him half-mad.

She wondered what Cassian must be feeling, what it must be like for him to have to entertain the thoughts she knew he had to be entertaining. Doubt had already been creeping into him -- doubt for organization, rather than cause, but doubt, nonetheless -- and now, it wouldn’t be surprising if it found a space to thrive.

“Can you trust them?” She hated having to ask, but she needed to.

He huffed, glanced at her. His hair was hanging over his eyes. “I don’t know. But what else am I to do?” He looked back toward the display, typed a command. “I can’t be so paranoid that we’re unable to function.”

She relaxed. Saw would have believed it was impossible to be too paranoid; it was a good sign that Cassian thought otherwise. 

The light was fading. Above, the first stars were becoming visible. He was hunched over the console, tapping the side of it, index finger beating a staccato rhythm. Things were slowing down, out of more than one brand of necessity, but there was reason yet to be on edge, and her veins were still pulsing with adrenaline. She watched him. Silent. There was a tether wrapped around her core, and it was being pulled. The direction of her thoughts was changing. Away from soldiering, away from her own survival, to his. To the mundane miracle of him sitting there, beside her. The moments in between, the moments in which she was largely free from diversion, were always the hardest.

Her knee burned. She hadn’t done anything about it yet; the need to sweep the ship, to take precautions, had been too urgent. She reached for it, rubbed her thigh, just above where the pain began.

“You should go and take care of that,” he said. His eyes hadn’t moved. “This is a one-person job.”

“Yeah.” It was true, but she hesitated. Shifted, uneasy. If she was being honest, a part of her didn’t want to take too hard a look at it. The mission wasn’t through, and she didn’t want to face the possibility that she’d have to take a backseat during the rest. But there was more to it than that.

She pressed her lips together. It wouldn’t take long. She could bring the medkit here, dress it here. Even if she didn’t do that, they were on the ship together. There was no reason for her to feel the anxiety she suddenly felt.

“Cassian.”

This was not the right time. This was not the right time at all, but he could have been gone, and the thought made her sick to her stomach.

He turned toward her, forehead wrinkling. “What?”

Her fingers curled, uncurled. Her eyes skittered toward the display, then back toward his face. She realized she had no idea what she was doing, or what she intended to say. Not good at this sort of thing, indeed. She sucked in a breath. When they were in the clear. Then, maybe. In the meantime, she needed to focus.

She began to rise. “I’ll be back.”

He grabbed her wrist, and her head whipped toward him. “Wait.” He shook his head once, twice. Lips parted. She heard him breathe. His grip was firm, and the lines around his eyes had gone smooth. “What is it?”

_ We’ve been tracked. It’s possible our transmissions have been intercepted. You have every reason to be on the verge of a crisis of faith, and I need medical attention, but all I can think about is the fact that I wouldn’t be able to stand you not being here. _

She chewed on her tongue. She had wanted. She had wanted and she had  _ had _ , plenty of times. This was very, very different. “On Scarif…” She closed her eyes, opened them again. “And then, here…” His grip tightened. She paused. “I don’t like the thought of you being dead.”

His eyes drifted down, focused on nothing, then drifted back up. He leaned forward, up, toward her. “Neither do I.” His thumb was resting over her pulse, and he pressed it into her flesh.

He’d smiled at her, on the turbolift. He’d barely been able to stand, and all signs had pointed in the direction of their mutual death, and yet he had smiled at her. He wasn’t smiling, now, but that moment was twined round this one, reverberating, its potential thickening in her throat, the endorphins from earlier in the day realigning. Aiming toward  _ life _ , and affirmation. Toward the certainty that they were both still present, both still real; that they existed in some way outside of the Force.

It wasn’t the right time. She broke eye contact. “You’re right; I need to take care of this.”

His hand slipped from her. His release of breath was loud and long.

She turned to go. Her blood ran hot, but she took a step. Later. When they’d exhausted need and responsibility. When they had time, or at least more of it than they had now. 

His chair creaked. Boots shuffled. She felt the heat of him at her back before he spoke, before he touched her. 

“Jyn.”

He placed his hand on her far shoulder, and left it there, waiting for her to make the decision. She turned back toward him. She couldn’t breathe. He looked at her with an intensity she’d seen and known only while mired in the depths of battle, and yes, yes, this was different. It was different enough to scare the shit out of her. 

Well. Timing wasn’t always everything, and she did things that scared her all the time. 

His lips were rough, from the heat and sun. His fingers were calloused, and they chafed the back of her neck, and then the back of her head. It was short.  _ Shy _ , if such a thing were possible (she would have said it wasn’t). They parted, and their eyes met. Air whistled through his teeth; his gaze moved, roved, and he kissed her again, with confidence, this time, with ardor. He held her to him at her waist, at her lower back. Half his hand was above her belt, the other half below, and she ran one of hers along the tendon connecting his shoulder and neck, touched his face. His stubble pricked her palm. 

She was shuddering. Slumping against him. He stepped back, into the edge of his chair, and stumbled into it. Brought her with him, and as they caught themselves, he smiled at her -- that same, soft smile, from that same, unending moment. She felt giddy. Dizzy. Drunk. She smiled back and pressed her forehead to his. Blood, skin, dancing, stomach twisting. Thoughts racing. 

This was stupid. They still had a job to do. They were still in danger, planetside, contingencies incomplete. They were colleagues, or something like it, close enough. If the Alliance saw fit to give her anything like an official rank, it would undoubtedly be below his. Attachment was a risk. She thrummed with grief, daily, tried to look away from it but was forced, always, at some point, to gaze upon it. Her father was dead. Saw was dead. Baze, Chirrut, and Bodhi were dead. K-2SO was dead.

But Cassian. Cassian was alive. Cassian had stayed. Cassian was warm, and his body was hard and solid, and his hands were on her thighs, on her hips. She was straddling him, knees on either side of the back of the seat, her injured one softly throbbing, and his hands were digging into her hips.

He rolled against her, bucked up into her, and she sucked on his lip and ground back. She wound her fingers through his hair, closed her fist. A low rumble rose up from his chest and tumbled into her mouth.

Shuddering, still. Breathless.  _ Never leave me _ . His lips on her ear, her neck. She had to taste like dust and sweat; he certainly did. But then, she didn’t care, so he must not have. His upper arms, flexing beneath her palms. His pulse, beating against her tongue. His hands, dragging up her sides. Kneading her upper back. Pulling her closer. An absence of space, and still too much of it. Her hand moved down his chest, over his abdomen. Her fingers picked at his belt.

He went still. Her heart contracted.

She leaned back. His eyes were narrowed, and there was a glaze over them. He was struggling to control his breathing.

“Hold on, we...” He turned away from her, toward the console. Swallowed hard. “I need to send the message. And we need to get out of here.”

Disappointment landed hard and heavy in the pit of her stomach. She shifted back, separating from him. “Oh.” It came out flat. Her voice was husky and low.

He touched her hair, then her hand. “Later.”

_ Later _ . It would be that. She should have listened to her own mind. “Sure. Of course.” She was weak. Aching. No one had ever made her wait before, not after she’d made her intentions clear.

She was nervous, suddenly, to the point of discomfort.

She slid off his lap. He kept hold of her hand. He could tell. There was an upward curve to his lips, and she knew that he could tell.

He pulled her back toward him, and it was hard not to kiss him again, now that she knew what it was like. His eyes were piercing, pupils dilated, and he made no effort to disguise the desire in his voice. “Really. I mean it.”

The relief that spread through her was heady. It loosened her lips. “Is it an order, then?”

He laughed, and the sound was absent any caveat. Happy, maybe, for just a moment.

That was a first.

* * *

They left the trackers behind, dropping them far enough from the ship to avoid blowback, close enough to disguise their movement. It would only buy them time, and not a whole lot of it; there was a detachment of dead Stormtroopers telecasting their escape, and if the ship’s computer had been compromised, then the second Cassian had completed his overwrite, he’d alerted whoever was monitoring them. But for a little while, at least, it would look as if they were still on the moon, and they could be reasonably sure that they were outside enemy notice. 

The real trouble was going to come later.

He sent the message as they took off, right before they cracked open the shell of the universe. It was a short, sweet missive:  _ mission to close; eyeing home _ . The important bit was the latter half, and the significance of him letting her know wasn’t lost on her.

The patch she’d secured over her knee was blocky; the ends caught on her trousers, making the edges bend back and dig into her skin. The bacta was warm, gooey, unpleasant in a vague, detached sort of way. As far as she could tell, she’d bruised the bursa and stretched a ligament. Not the worst injury, but more than she’d like, and more than she’d have if she hadn’t been erring on the side of stingy.

She pushed her leg out in front of her, until her foot struck paneling. It felt better when it was fully extended.

“You know, the second the Alliance starts to move...” She still couldn’t bring herself to say “we.”

“I do know.” His expression was pained. “The destination has to be need-to-know, even during relocation. Transport pilots and high command only.”

“We’re having to go outside of command.”

“Yes, well.”

There may not have been anyone; they may have picked up the tail in their travels. But they couldn’t assume that. They had to plan for the potential of it going back further, of it going up higher.

“This has to be done,” he said. “If the Empire knows about Yavin 4, then we don’t have any other choice. We have to hope it will work out.”

She looked at him. It was a rotten bargain, really. An infiltrator would give away any new base, as soon as she or he were able, but the Alliance couldn’t  _ not _ establish one. Time was going to be short. He had a network, buried beneath official lines, and it looked very much as if they were going to have to sink into it. At least they’d established, to good effect, that they were decent at going rogue. 

Their hands were loosely linked. With his thumb, he was tracing patterns, idle, on her palm. She had no clue when “later” might be, but it was nice to wonder “when” rather than “if.”

“So, why Hoth?” Bottom of the list. Barren wasteland.

“Right now, they can’t see where we’re going. They have to guess.” He caught her eye. “And who would want to go there?”

_ I’m wondering if hospitable might actually be a detractor _ .

Her heart beat in an unfamiliar pattern, and her stomach burned. They were many, many things that he had yet to tell her, and many others that she pretended not to know. He was taking them to a world that she knew he’d rather not go to, despite him never saying anything about it. Even now, with the possibility of betrayal hanging over him. 

His devotion was a force unto itself. She wondered what it would be like to be a focus for it.

The cockpit was bathed in blue and white; specks of gold and red, indicator lights, cut through the shadows. He looked grave, as serious as the situation facing them. She wanted to walk back with him. She wanted to give him someone to rely on, if the coming weeks played out the way she hoped they wouldn’t. Wanted to give him someone he could trust -- really, truly trust, based on something real, rather than on a masquerade. 

“Hey.”

“Hmm?”

Her pulse raced, faster than it had when she’d been in his arms. She swiveled toward him and squeezed his hand.

“Tell me about Fest.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My plan for this story was to have it be about this one mission, and about Jyn and Cassian falling in to what kind of maybe might be a relationship. But I've realized, from reading the comments, that I wound up generating a lot more interest in the background than I ever thought I would.
> 
> So, if you're here and you're still reading but you're kind of like, "alp, wtf, who is tracking them and why haven't J & C kicked their ass," I want to let you know that my intention is to write a sequel that zooms out to encompass the larger picture, and that deals with exactly that. Echo Base, shit going down, up and into 'The Empire Strikes Back.' 
> 
> But...until then, again, thank you so much. Y'all are the best.


End file.
